


Obsequies

by endofthyme



Series: Dragon Prince Works [1]
Category: The Dragon Prince (Cartoon)
Genre: Canon Temporary Character Death, Dragon Prince Season 3 Spoilers, Dwelling Over a Corpse, Episode: s03e09 The Final Battle, Gen, Grieving, Missing Scene, Necromancy, POV Claudia (The Dragon Prince), POV Third Person Limited
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-30
Updated: 2019-11-30
Packaged: 2021-02-26 06:27:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,464
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21619114
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/endofthyme/pseuds/endofthyme
Summary: He was dead, and here she was, alive.
Relationships: Claudia & Viren (The Dragon Prince)
Series: Dragon Prince Works [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2046407
Comments: 11
Kudos: 58





	Obsequies

**Author's Note:**

> A known necrophobe finishes writing a fanfiction for the first time in 7 years, and it ends up being largely about interacting with a dead body. It's funny how things go sometimes.

She collapsed to the ground next to him like a puppet, strings cut. 

It was over.

It almost felt like a relief.

How could she feel _relieved?_

She reached out trembling fingers to grasp his hand. The warmth was draining from it, but its thin bones were miraculously unbroken under the skin, unlike, it seemed, every other part of his body.

He would never have wanted to die like this. To be found like this. Her meticulous, fastidious father, always so careful with his appearance. If he had to die, he would have preferred to be poisoned or something along those lines, to be found tidily arranged in his bed as if sleeping. Or just incinerated completely, in a pitched battle against the dragons, fighting for the future of Katolis—of humanity.

She heard a shout from a distance and flinched, ready to run, or fight, or scream, or do _something_. But the shout was joyous, not angry. No one had seen her. No one had seen them. Word must have spread, that they had really won. That Lord Viren had fallen, that _her father_ was…

She couldn't let them find him this way. She wouldn't allow him to end up a gruesome sight gawked at by his enemies, to be used as a symbol of what happened to people who pushed boundaries and broke rules. Let them wonder instead where his body had gone, whether his magic had caused him to fall to dust or allowed him to survive somehow. Let them fear the possibility of his return.

She set his hand down, and reached mechanically into her reagent bag for what she needed—something with enough fire in it to consume human bone and leave no trace. Lord Viren would have a king's funeral, and she would mourn enough for seven kingdoms. Right now. Alone.

Her vision blurred and she drew in a gasping sob, falling forward onto the chest of the corpse in front of her. She was getting blood all over her hands, and her clothes, and her hair, but she didn't give a damn. It was _over._ All of his big plans, for Katolis, for humanity, the plans no one else could accomplish or would even have the courage to try, they had all come to _nothing._ And her small family had dwindled to just… her. 

Her breathing evened out eventually. She could feel his blood slowly congealing on her skin, between her fingers, under her nails. She couldn't wait any longer; she had to do this now, before they were discovered. She pulled away, carefully, separating strands of her own hair from what was left of her father, and reached for the jar that had fallen next to her. She stood, holding it clasped between her hands as she gazed out into the middle distance.

"Lord Vir—" she started to say, to her imaginary audience, but tears welled up again and her throat closed. She couldn't do this. She couldn't give him the send-off he deserved.

She had to do this. There was no one else who would.

"Lord Viren was a great man." She swallowed, ignoring the hot tears running down her cheeks. "A _good_ man. He…" Her hands gripped the glass so hard she thought she might crush it between them, but in this moment she didn't care. "He was just—he was _trying_ to do what was _necessary._ To protect all of us!" Her chest heaved, and she felt light-headed, like she wasn't getting enough air into her lungs. "He was my _dad."_

Something made a noise behind her, and she spun around, ready to throw the fireball meant for her father's remains directly into the face of whoever _dared_ disturb them.

It was that bug. It was twitching and stirring. It had been splayed out on its back, its color faded to a dull purple-gray, when she'd stepped past it on her way to her father's side. But now it was pulsing with light again.

Why did that thing get to survive? It was supposed to help him, to make sure he had the power to win this. Now he was dead, and here it was, alive.

It twisted itself upright, bringing its head up to survey the scene, cobra-like, taking everything in. Its gaze lingered on the jar in her hands.

Then it started crawling closer.

She took a step to block its path. "Haven't you done enough?" she demanded, anger flaring.

It paused, and looked up at her steadily. She broke eye contact first, turning abruptly away, and it slithered past her, reaching the body of the man it had failed. It stared down at him, head cocked, motionless except for the lights that continued to dance along its back.

For a few ludicrous seconds, she wondered if it would do something. Fix this somehow.

Instead, it just turned itself around and crawled off once more.

Fine. It had gotten the chance to pay its respects. Whatever brief, painful hopes its enigmatic behavior had sparked in her were her own damn fault. Now it was past time to burn away every trace of the man who had raised her, leaving nothing of him behind but memories. He deserved that much.

She opened the jar.

A shrill, polyphonic cry came from behind her, and she spun on her heel to face the bug again, slamming the stopper back down. "What?!" she demanded. "We can't just _leave_ him like this!"

It stared at her with narrow eyes for a moment before ducking its head to nudge deliberately at the golden staff which had slipped from her grasp some paces off from her father's corpse. Then, with its gaze unwaveringly on her, using the sharp point of its tail, it started to carve a shape into the dirt.

Her breath caught in her throat. Her reagent jar thudded to the ground once more, only to be knocked aside by her heedless feet as she stumbled towards the insect, and the staff, and the rune, oh, stars above, the _rune._ It had the semblance of something she'd seen once, in a book, next to an ingredient list too elusive to try for. A healing spell, meant to mend flesh and repair bone. "Would that even _work?"_ she whispered. "He's… dead."

The bug stared at her a moment more, then dipped its head to push against the staff again.

She reached down and grasped the weapon with a white-knuckled grip. As she lifted it, the bug caught hold and hitched a ride up into the air, winding itself around the shaft. It seemed to make a particular effort to run its segmented body up against her arm as it did, but she didn't recoil from it. She barely even felt it. She simply returned to her father, inhaled deeply, and began to trace out the rune directly above him with the darkly glowing head of the staff.

Her mouth opened. She didn't know the words to the spell, but it didn't seem to matter. Power rushed through her, blood pounded in her ears, and the world turned gray around her. Energy crackled in the air, and she did her utmost to gather it all together and channel it where she needed it to go.

It was working. She watched as shattered limbs straightened out, deep gashes closed, and blood and viscera that had seeped out or splattered away was pulled back into his body. When the spell faded, blood still stained his robe, but the skin underneath the rips was unmarred except by a deep, mottled bruising. She fell to her knees next to him, reaching for his face.

But it was still pale with death, and cold. No breath stirred in his lungs, and no blood pumped through his veins. "It didn't work," she said, voice flat. She didn't look away from his face, and didn't want to look at the horrible, awful bug, but it arched off of its perch and into her field of vision anyway. 

When it had wrested her attention, it just… tilted its head ever so slightly, reminding her of nothing more than how tutors would look at her in disappointment when she or, more often, S—someone else said something foolish during a lesson. Then it nodded down at the body, jerked its head in a beckoning motion, hopped down from the staff, and started to crawl away from them, the mountain of the Dragon King at its back.

That had to mean that spell was just the first step, right? It wouldn't want her to bring him if there was nothing that could be done… right?

She scanned the ground around them. They had to leave no trace if they could help it. She snatched up her much-abused ingredient jar and stowed it away, and scuffed up the rune the bug had drawn until nothing could be seen of it. Then, she hoisted her father's corpse up onto her back.

With her foot, she churned the earth where he had lain as best she could, hiding traces of blood under a layer of soil. She hoped that would be enough, that this spot would just become another patch of dirt amongst hundreds of patches of dirt all around the base of this huge, _wretched_ mountain. And then, that done, she began to follow haltingly after the bug.

The dead weight of her father dragged heavily on her shoulders and back. His cold cheek and ear pressed against her face, and it felt like every point of contact that they had was leeching warmth from her body. She ignored it. He needed the warmth more than her. He was going to live. How could she have doubted it?

How could she have been so ready to give up on him—to abandon him and move on, like everyone else? Her, of all people. She'd almost burned his body, before his blood had even had the chance to dry. And then what? Where would she have gone? What would she have done? She had nowhere and nothing, no options and no plans. She pushed aside thoughts of Callum, of Ezran, of… yeah. There was no way in this world that she could have gone to them, not with her father dead and the blame for it laid at their feet.

And if he lived— _when_ he lived… well. There was no way she could go to them anyway. Things were so different now. But she knew where she stood. She wouldn't falter again. She would be what he needed her to be, and she would do what he needed her to do, and she wouldn't waver or doubt—not anymore, never again.

It felt like hours before they reached a cave the bug deemed acceptable. Every muscle in her body was burning from strain, and she gladly tossed to the ground the elven staff she carried, but she made sure to set her true burden down with excessive care, cradling his head with her hand as she propped him up against the cave wall. Sitting next to him, she carded her fingers through his hair for a moment, then pulled the dented, bloodied crown from his head and set it aside. It didn't seem comfortable.

She looked to the bug.

She didn't look at it _expectantly,_ exactly, except in that she expected something of it. She wasn't hopeful, or anticipatory. It was simply that there was no other option. It would tell her what she needed to do next, and then she would do it.

It approached her and started to dig through her bag, using its stubby, clinging legs to pull out a multitude of containers. She could feel its movements through the fabric, but she didn't shudder or cringe away. She just watched silently, noting that it wasn't pulling out everything she carried. It eschewed the horns and claws and stones and liquids and powders. Instead, every single jar, bottle, and vial it plucked out contained inside it something… living.

It rummaged around a few moments more, checking the deepest corners of the bag, then withdrew, seemingly satisfied that it had found everything that could be of use. With the loop of its body, it slid one of the bottles towards her. She got the feeling it didn't much matter which one it was. She picked it up and held it in her lap, the jostled moths fluttering frenetically inside, as the snake-like insect made its way to a patch of sandy gravel coating the cave floor. It rolled over it, sweeping its canvas flat, before tracing out a new and far more intricate rune. This one was deeply unfamiliar, looking nothing like anything she'd ever seen before. And then, beside it, the bug drew a very simple symbol that was by contrast utterly familiar to her—a shorthand used regularly in cookbooks and alchemical texts to mean "repeat as needed."

She glanced at the cluster of twenty or more containers piled up next to her. It probably suspected she would need all of them.

She uncorked the first bottle and caught the three moths in her hand. She could feel them squirming helplessly against her palm and fingers, desperately trying to beat their wings. Trying to preserve their lives. Good. That meant there was likely enough life in them for it to be of use. With her other hand, she sketched this new rune in the air.

Potential thrummed under her skin, and she pushed it all into the body by her side. The writhing of the moths slowed, then stopped. She eked out what little was left of their vital essence, then let their gray husks drop to the ground.

Her shoulders slumped, drained, but she reached for the next jar. She didn't allow herself to wonder if she saw a hint of color returning to his cheeks or the faintest twitch of movement behind his eyelids. Whether or not she saw any sign of her efforts coming to fruition, she wouldn't rest until her job was complete. And if she ran out of ingredients, she would go out and capture more. She would do whatever she had to. _Take_ whatever was necessary. Even if that meant…

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the bug scuttle away, leaving her to her grim work.

The silence was stifling. She didn't know the words to this spell either, if there actually were supposed to be any, but she felt compelled to speak.

She wanted her father back. Damn the consequences. It didn't matter what she had to do, what she had to sacrifice. What she had to become. She would make the universe bow to her demands—that he return, that he recover, that he—

  
  
**"live."**

  
  
  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> I saw that fucking shoe, Claudia!! I know what you did!! _And when your dad finds out, he's_ —going to be very proud of you.
> 
> ... Anyway, hope you enjoyed. Fate willing, I'll be writing another fic sometime before (checks watch) 2026.


End file.
